Like the Fort Hood shooter, Jamal Baadani is a military officer who is an Arab-American and a Muslim. But there the similarities end. A first sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, Baadani heads the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military. Full Article at NewsMax

"Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble." A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe." Full Article at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fresh Air excerpts make a fascinating read. After the dustjacket copy, via Amazon: They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. Full Article at Jules Crittenden

In the months before the war in Iraq began in March 2003, many American soldiers took part in huge mock tank battles against a mythical army known as the “Kraznovians.” The Kraznovians were modeled after the Soviet Army, which had evaporated more than... Full Article at The New York Times

"The Long War" merely exchanged the shock-'n'-awe geographical breadth of the President Bush's chosen moniker ("global") for a shock-'n'-awe time span. Full Article at The Nation

Lessons from the Long War and a Blowback World Is it too early — or already too late — to begin drawing lessons from “the Long War”? Full Article at Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films